Two Images
by the.goal.is.greatness
Summary: When love overpowers reason, how far would you go to get something back? [Durand x d'Eon, past Durand x Lia] [drabble mini-series]
1. Chapter 01 In The Beginning

**Title:** Two Images  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Durand x d'Eon, past Durand x Lia  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** When love overpowers reason, how far would you go to get something back?  
**Word Count:** 415  
**Warnings:** N/A

**Disclaimer:** _Le Chevalier d'Eon _is not is from _something_ (because I wrote it down as a note), but now I can't find what. A movie, maybe? If anyone knows, that would be great!

**A/N:** Drabble mini-series.

* * *

_Have mercy upon me, o Lord, I am consumed by grief, my bones are vexed, my soul…_

* * *

Lia was everything he could ever have imagined in a woman. She was beautiful: so beautiful that sometimes he thought she might be an angel come to earth. All soft lines and flinted eyes; lithe limbs and deadly grace. The perfect juxtapose of lovely and lethal. Messes of soft tousled hair and arched cheeks. She was achingly beautiful. Like a painting he had seen in a museum. Or a statue come to life. A Venus.

But then, but then…

Then she was gone, gone, gone. Gone so far away that he could not follow, where he could pray all he wanted but he doubted she would ever hear him. And even if she did, he would never know her answer. Never hear her fluting laugh or see her narrow-lipped smirk when she'd proven you wrong. Never hear her quips and watch her mind whirl with intelligence and fervor. Never. No more. Gone.

He missed so many things about her. She was beyond her time as a woman, smart and audacious and bright. So quick-witted it was a wonder and a sight to watch her tear some pompous ass of a man into pieces with a quiet smile and poisoned words. Durand couldn't get enough of watching them stammer and stutter as she broke them apart.

Women always wore layers upon layers of clothing these days and, for Durand, anytime he got to peel one of those layers away it was like every gift he'd ever unwrapped all rolled into one. Gloves and petticoats and skirts and pleated underskirt and corset and stockings… so many articles of cloth and lace and silk. Row after row of buttons to undo with tantalizing slowness. It was torture.

But also such bliss to watch the miles and miles of milky, white skin, soft as satin, reveal itself to his eyes and hands and mouth. It was glorious and divine and his.

And now it was gone.


	2. Chapter 02 For I Am Weak

**Title:** Two Images  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Durand x d'Eon, past Durand x Lia  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** When love overpowers reason, how far would you go to get something back?  
**Word Count:** 706  
**Warnings:** N/A

**Disclaimer:** _Le Chevalier d'Eon _is not is from _something_ (because I wrote it down as a note), but now I can't find what. A movie, maybe? If anyone knows, that would be great!

**A/N:** Drabble mini-series.

* * *

_All my ways are before thee. Deliver your servant, o Lord, my God, out of the hand of the wicked. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul, he has made me dwell in darkness as those long dead. Put them in fear, o Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men._

* * *

D'Eon is both like and unlike his Lia. It is like looking at a distorted reflection in a pool of water. The image is mostly the same, but it ripples and shifts and shudders with differences, as well.

He is hard where Lia was soft. D'Eon is man. He has a breadth of shoulders that Lia did not have. A narrow-hipped swagger that is feminine in only the slightest way. His hands, though long-fingered and graceful, are calloused, the palms broad and wide, the nails sort and clipped. The lines of his face fall from the cheeks of his sister to his jaw – ridged and long. His chest is barreled instead of bouncing, his thighs muscled instead of malleable.

But their tumble of rich chestnut hair, the texture of rumbled bed sheets, is the same. It falls about a face built of the same milk pale skin and emerald chipped eyes. The lips are the same. While Lia might have tilted hers in haughty enjoyment over dressing someone down without their notice, D'Eon quirked his with a softness that was endearing in this dark and tumultuous world. And his eyes had a way of seeing through you, just like Lia. But with Lia, she saw your faults, your sins, the darkest part of yourself that you kept hidden from the world. D'Eon saw the goodness. He saw softness. He saw light.

At first, his very gender made him invisible to Durand. D'Eon was a man, no matter how sloe his eyes or how tousled his hair. He was a man, no matter how silken smooth his skin looked or how gracefully he moved. He was nothing Durand would be interested in.

But then Robin would surprise a laugh out of him and the sound would be all Lia. He would turn his head in just the right way and the profile was all his sister. There was Lia in how he walked and in the way he moved his wrists as he spoke. In how he held a sword.

And it made Durand see him.

He watched D'Eon, aching to see those small glimpses of his lost Lia and the more he watched the more he noticed. And the more he saw the differences.

There was only D'Eon in the soft, subtle smile for Robin's antics. There was only D'Eon in the uncharacteristically sprawling way he slept: limbs akimbo and spread-eagled, mouth open and hair _everywhere_. It was unrestrained and _real_. There was only D'Eon in the narrow hipped walk, reserved and serene. There is none of Lia in the way D'Eon sits with his legs crossed ankle over knee. Or in the way his eyes light up at a joke, as bright as absinthe and glowing like pale stones. There is no Lia in the way he speaks, polite and proper, but not out of protocol, but only out of the fact that he is a truly good person.

It intrigued him, make him want to find more similarities, more differences. Durand wants to know everything about what makes D'Eon tick, which gears are the same as Lia and which are different. He wanted to discover all the little things that made him who he was. He wanted to learn about him piece by piece and find each little shred of Lia he could find in all her bits and pieces.

But when he dug just beneath the surface, what he found was simply… D'Eon.


	3. Chapter 03 Apart From Thee

**Title:** Two Images  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Durand x d'Eon, past Durand x Lia  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** When love overpowers reason, how far would you go to get something back?  
**Word Count:** 738  
**Warnings:** N/A

**Disclaimer:** _Le Chevalier d'Eon _is not is from _something_ (because I wrote it down as a note), but now I can't find what. A movie, maybe? If anyone knows, that would be great!

**A/N:** Drabble mini-series.

* * *

_Have mercy on me, I am weary with my groaning. My soul is filled with grief because of all mine enemies._

* * *

What differences then to woo him? What differences from his Lia, his own, who admired feats of daring and chivalry and belief above all others? She loved a daring turn of phrase, a well-wielded sword, a dashing smile. They made her sing.

But D'Eon… no… those were not for him, he thought. D'Eon, for all his gender demanded he be the stronger sex, the valiant half, he was far more delicate that Lia ad ever been. He did not need protecting no, but he needed… softness. Soft smiles and soft eyes. Soft touches on the wrist and a grasping hand to the shoulder held too long to be merely comradery.

"Would you like to dance?"

Green eyes shoot wide and the head shoots up at the question, but Durand has a sword held expertly in his hand and an innocent expression on his face, hiding the double meaning behind the words. But that softest bloom of blush on those pale cheeks proved he heard the double entendre. But Durand kept up his bland expression, holding out one hand in invitation.

D'Eon nodded, a swift, jerking motion and stood to his feet, following Durand out and around corners to the alley they had all been using to practice in. Durand felt a frisson of electricity as they stood facing one another. He'd dueled with Lia before, but with Lia, when she fought, her emotions were right there at the top, never far from the surface. When you dueled with her you did not have to work to see the flush of exertion, the bright eyes from combat. But D'Eon was so reserved that it was a fight to wrestle those visible signs of emotion from him. Another kind of fight from dancing footwork and twirling swords. And Durand itched to see if he could make those eyes glitter, his breaths pant, his cheeks flush.

So parry, thrust, retreat. They fell into the easy motions of a practice duel. But here and there, something more. A loose strand of golden-brown hair comes free and the strands brush so tantalizing close to Durand's nose the he cannot help but inhale. The scent is clove and orange and oil and he leans forward to follow it without thought. When their swords are pressed together and they are face to face, his eyes rove over that face, so different, this close. D'Eon seems to sense something _more_ in the gaze and retreats with a stagger. His eyes dart over Durand, assessing, contemplative… intrigued?

Durand quirks his mouth and one brow with a come-hither glance that turns into a full-blown grin when D'Eon blushes as pretty as a portrait. He tries hard not to let something idiotic and transparent come out of his mouth. "Well isn't that a sight for sore eyes." Well he doesn't try that hard. It's worth it to watch the blush deepen and the sword to tremble as it lowers in confusion, those green eyes flitting everywhere but Durand's own face.

"Nothing to say?" The question itself it taunting, but the tone is soft, subtle… tender, and it makes those eyes glance up at him as the sword lowers all the way. Durand lowers his own sword and they stare at one another, a thousand questions in the space between them, a rift that feels like miles instead of meters, fathoms instead of feet. It is thick with questions. It makes him uncomfortable. "Say something… anything…"

D'Eon blinks, slow and contemplative, and lets the strangeness of the situation wash over them both. Their mission hangs between them. Their genders and their Church and their shared past with the same woman, different, but there. He looks away for so long that Durand holds his breath. When he looks back, His eyes are hesitant and nervous, a little terrified…

… but a little hopeful, too.


	4. Chapter 04 Lift Up Your Heads

**Title:** Two Images  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Durand x d'Eon, past Durand x Lia  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** When love overpowers reason, how far would you go to get something back?  
**Word Count:** 636  
**Warnings:** N/A

**Disclaimer:** _Le Chevalier d'Eon _is not is from _something_ (because I wrote it down as a note), but now I can't find what. A movie, maybe? If anyone knows, that would be great!

**A/N:** Drabble mini-series.

* * *

_My lips shall declare thy righteousness, o Lord. Preserve my life that they might call upon my name._

* * *

It is a slow, slow process. An excruciatingly gradual slow burn that was as maddening as it was satisfying. There were no thoughts any more of what Lia had once wanted or done, what it would have once taken to woo her, to make her look at him with fluttering lashes and pursed lips. No, his mind was all D'Eon.

How could he make D'Eon blush? How could he make D'Eon gasp in startled shock and shift his eyes away, but with a pleased half-smile on those lips? How could he make D'Eon stare at him when he thought Durand wasn't paying attention, eyes intrigued and curious? How, how, how?

A thousand years of Church edicts separated them, made this a leap that was more like a hurtling plunge. But it mattered not to Durand. He had done other things he was sure the Church and King would disapprove of, they could just add this to the list if they ever found out. But the challenge was making D'Eon think it was worth the terror of being found out. A graze of fingernails down the inside of a wrist as they sat beside one another at breakfast. A hand pressed firmly against a hips to resettle his stance as they trained together. A poignant glance down at his lips as D'Eon spoke.

Slow and steady.

Durand executed his perusal of D'Eon like it was a siege, like predator and prey. Every move calculated and watched and memorized and stored away for future use. He found that something as simple as a soft and gentle and _real_ smile was enough to make him redden as pretty as a rose. Something as easy as kindness (offering to assist their maid with something, assisting an elderly woman), a charitable act, however small, and D'Eon eyes would practically light up like fireworks in surprised pleasure. It make a zing shoot through Durand to see that look of pleased adoration directed his way.

And slowly, slowly, as slow as flower petals unfurling under the sun, D'Eon returned each smile with a hesitant one of his own, unsure and unsteady, but growing stronger. He started to linger instead of pull away at each 'unintentional' caress and instead he starts to lean into them, to cant his wrist outward in invitation, though it makes him quiet and shy to do so. When someone makes a joke that is all innuendo in the tavern they are eating, his eyes flick to Durand with a quirked brow and a subtle smirk that makes Durand's heart trip into a waltz.

It is glorious.

The first time he leans close, closer, closest during a duel, shoulders looming wide and high over him and D'Eon's pupils blow wide in immediate reaction, it is all Durand can do not to lean even nearer and bridge the gap between them. It makes him groan to keep himself still and apart, letting that distance remain between them.

But there is no need, because there is a beat, then two, and D'Eon reaches out to twist his fingers in Durand's jacket and pull him gently and deliberately closer, until he is close enough that he can tilt up his chin and press their lips together.

And it is divine.


	5. Chapter 05 Give Rapture

**Title:** Two Images  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Durand x d'Eon, past Durand x Lia  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** When love overpowers reason, how far would you go to get something back?  
**Word Count:** 692  
**Warnings:** N/A

**Disclaimer:** _Le Chevalier d'Eon _is not is from _something_ (because I wrote it down as a note), but now I can't find what. A movie, maybe? If anyone knows, that would be great!

**A/N:** Drabble mini-series.

* * *

_Why are our fields ravaged by those with no hearts? O Lord, let them be clothed with shame and dishonor that rejoice at mine hurt and magnify themselves against me. Give rapture to my justice._

* * *

That slow burn it took to get here suddenly ignites and it is perfect and heavenly and there is no thought or moment lost on Lia. There is only D'Eon, D'Eon, D'Eon.

D'Eon who is as loose-limbed and sprawling in bed awake as he is asleep. D'Eon who's every motion is languid and precise, thought-out and deliberate, so considering it makes Durand want to cry with each brush of long fingers and soft brush of lips. D'Eon who lets his hair hand flowing and free when they are alone and it should make him think of Lia, but it does not, not even for a second. It makes him think that D'Eon looks softhearted and serene like that, with is gold-brown hair haloed around his head in a heady plume of scent and silken strands.

It makes Durand want to protect him and cherish him and worship him; lay the world at his feet in abject offering. It makes Durand want to prostrate at his feet for even one second of undivided attention from those emerald eyes. He cannot help it. He wants to sink into that man and never come up for air, he wants to drown in him. In his sighs and pants and breathy moans. In his heady laughter and precious, tiny smiles.

If Fate exists, if she is real and true and designates men's lives for what they will be, then every second he spent with Lia was to lead him here, to this, to him. And it is something that Durand cannot help but feel an all-consuming and encompassing happiness for because this… this is what he has always imagined love would be like. He had never in his wildest dreams imagined it with another man, and he knows D'Eon feels the same from the sometimes wondering look he catches in his eyes. But it's true.

There can be no other word for it than love. The ache in his chest when they part, heavy as an anvil sitting on his heart. That same weight, in the same place, when they meet, but it is not in sorrow then. That weight is a happiness that is too dense and substantial to give a name to. The weight of fondness and feeling, adoration and ardor, of love. It is like he can't take a deep enough breathe to remove the tightness in his lungs. Like the only thing that can relieve the ache is the feel of D'Eon in his arms, burying his head in the curve of shoulder, feeling arms and legs winding around him and clenching tight. He cannot sleep without the pungent, cloying scent of hair – oil and steel, whiskey and smoke – thick in his nose. His arms yearn for the comfort of D'Eon beside him at night. It is agony not to intertwine their fingers as they walk, hips and shoulders bumping suggestively.

He knows it is too much to expect a world where this would be accepted and ignored. At best he could hope they would both be exiled if found out. They did not have the luxury of royal blood to stave off any questions or curious glances or guillotines. So they leave their love for the dark, for alleys and corners and private rooms.

But every single moment with D'Eon, with his eyes looking at up at him, bright with joy and rapture, a halo of gold around him, is the most perfect kind of Heaven Durand could ever imagine.


End file.
